PHP json_encode json_decode UTF-8 [duplicate]

Question

How can I save a json-encoded string with international characters to the databse and then parse the decoded string in the browser?

<?php           
    $string = "très agréable";  
    // to the database 
    $j_encoded = json_encode(utf8_encode($string)); 
    // get from Database 
    $j_decoded = json_decode($j_encoded); 
?>    
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">
    <?= $j_decoded ?>
</html>

Try setting the charset for your page to UTF-8... <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> in the <head> block — Mark Baker
– Mark Baker, Commented Nov 2, 2010 at 11:08
@Mark, that worked, but only when using $j_encoded = json_encode($string); so without the utf8_encode() — TunaFFish
– TunaFFish, Commented Nov 2, 2010 at 11:17
@FFish get rid of the utf8_encode() in your code, I just saw that (Edit: ah, you were quicker) — Pekka
– Pekka, Commented Nov 2, 2010 at 11:17

Lukas Liesis · Accepted Answer · 2024-11-04 12:07:04Z

82

json utf8 encode and decode:

json_encode($data, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE)

json_decode($json, false, 512, JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE)

This was answer from 2015, as Tom mentioned in commments, this flag may not work anymore. It is still mentioned in all predefined JSON constants but not on this function itself exclusively. Could be php updated the flags during all these years, php manual mentions these flags on json_decode:

Bitmask of JSON_BIGINT_AS_STRING, JSON_INVALID_UTF8_IGNORE, JSON_INVALID_UTF8_SUBSTITUTE, JSON_OBJECT_AS_ARRAY, JSON_THROW_ON_ERROR. The behaviour of these constants is described on the JSON constants page.

https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.json-decode.php

https://www.php.net/manual/en/json.constants.php#constant.json-unescaped-unicode

force utf8 might be helpfull too: http://pastebin.com/2XKqYU49

edited Nov 4, 2024 at 12:07

answered May 24, 2015 at 14:55

Lukas Liesis

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5 Comments

Lukas Liesis Over a year ago

why giving minus? I had enough situations where this is THE only way that worked. Don't tell me all the stuff about encoding of file, database etc. There are situations you don't know your resource's encoding and it comes in random. Some utf8 some any other you can imagine.

Ariel Over a year ago

Only thing that worked for me, i'm building an API and i need to purely print the response as json with encoded chars

CPHPython Over a year ago

Thanks Lukas, this was exactly what I was looking for. It converts encoding such as \u00e9 into é. I just confirmed its usage in the PHP docs (example 2). I am still curious though, is the depth parameter really useful? If the recursion is stopped at some depth, does it mean the json will not be fully en/decoded according to the bitmask?

Peter Krauss Over a year ago

See also this answer, use JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE|JSON_UNESCAPED_SLASHES

TomTerrific Over a year ago

The php manual says JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE is not a valid flag for json_decode.

Pekka · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-02 11:17:00Z

29

This is an encoding issue. It looks like at some point, the data gets represented as ISO-8859-1.

Every part of your process needs to be UTF-8 encoded.

The database connection
The database tables
Your PHP file (if you are using special characters inside that file as shown in your example above)
The content-type headers that you output

answered Nov 2, 2010 at 11:17

Pekka

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2 Comments

TunaFFish Over a year ago

I think this is the best answer, I need to check my DB encoding!

Pedro Moreira Over a year ago

You could add the code needed to accomplish all of that.

Ahmet Erkan ÇELİK · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-23 19:45:08Z

29

  header('Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8');

answered Dec 23, 2013 at 19:45

Ahmet Erkan ÇELİK

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Comments

coding Bott · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-02 11:17:09Z

13

If your source-file is already utf8 then drop the utf8_* functions. php5 is storing strings as array of byte.

you should add a meta tag for encoding within the html AND you should add an http header which sets the transferencoding to utf-8.

<html>
<head>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

and in php

<?php
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

answered Nov 2, 2010 at 11:17

coding Bott

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Comments

Coquevas · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-02 11:17:10Z

5

Try sending the UTF-8 Charset header:

<?php header ('Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8'); ?>

And the HTML meta:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

answered Nov 2, 2010 at 11:17

Coquevas

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Comments

teemitzitrone · Accepted Answer · 2010-11-02 11:27:10Z

5

utf8_decode $j_decoded = utf8_decode(json_decode($j_encoded)); EDIT or to be more correct $j_encoded = json_encode($j_encoded); $j_decoded = json_decode($j_encoded); no need for en/decoding utf8
<meta charset="utf-8" />

edited Nov 2, 2010 at 11:27

answered Nov 2, 2010 at 11:13

teemitzitrone

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4 Comments

Pekka Over a year ago

Why would one need utf8_decode() (which converts to ISO-8859-1) in a UTF-8 environment?

TunaFFish Over a year ago

ok, I see. I have to utf8_decode() as well.. Is there a difference doing utf8_decode(json_decode($j_encoded)) vs json_decode(utf8_decode($j_encoded))?

teemitzitrone Over a year ago

yes it is, and to be correct you shouldn't use utf8_encode anyway. but the way you used it is the poit. 1 you encode utf8 then json so to get your input you have to decode json and then utf8

teemitzitrone Over a year ago

@Pekka if you mess up encoding anyway (see the utf8_encode) you have to correct it. ok, don't mess up the encoding is also a solution and i've edited my answer to reflect that

rink.attendant.6 · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-16 17:43:17Z

4

For me both methods

<?php

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

echo json_encode($YourData, \JSON_UNESCAPED_UNICODE);

edited May 16, 2019 at 17:43

rink.attendant.6

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answered May 16, 2019 at 17:11

EVGENIY DANILOV

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Comments

Douglas Comim · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-26 19:54:08Z

1

Work for me :)

function jsonEncodeArray( $array ){
    array_walk_recursive( $array, function(&$item) { 
       $item = utf8_encode( $item ); 
    });
    return json_encode( $array );
}

answered Jul 26, 2017 at 19:54

Douglas Comim

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2 Comments

randomsock Over a year ago

Thanks, this pointed the way for me, except it made things worse at first! :) then I realized that was because something had obviously been "over encoded" somewhere deeper in the stack, so - perhaps strangely - changing the utf8_encode to utf8_decode solved it.

WiiLF Over a year ago

utf8_decode() is always the go to. Beyond that, your looking at mb_convert_encoding() or my preferred - iconv extension.

Blox · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-09 04:17:45Z

0

if you get "unexpected Character" error you should check if there is a BOM (Byte Order Marker saved into your utf-8 json. You can either remove the first character or save if without BOM.

answered Oct 9, 2016 at 4:17

Blox

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Comments

Michał Moskal · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-11 15:07:43Z

0

I had the same problem. It might differ depending on how You put the data to the db, but try what worked for me:

$str = json_encode($data);
$str = addslashes($str);

Do this before saving data to db.

answered Aug 11, 2019 at 15:07

Michał Moskal

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